A picture is worth a thousand words.

Too Close for Comfort

It looks like a scene straight out of a HK cop drama, but no it’s not.

A call from Alvin at around 10 last night sent a chill down my spine. He had been out with a friend when he heard piercing screams of agony from across the road. Shortly, flicker of news on the TV confirmed the suspicion. He had just witnessed an acid attack right in the heart of one of the city’s busiest shopping district.

Six pedestrians were injured in this latest attack, of which two suffered serious burns having been struck on the face by a bottle of corrosive liquid hurled down from an old building near SOGO in Causeway Bay. This adds to a total of five acid attacks in Hong Kong since last December (with three occurring in Mongkok, yet another bustling shopping area), though it remains unclear whether this spate of incidents are related.

What makes this extremely unnerving was that I was less than 50 metres away from the scene of the crime just some 30 minutes before it happened, and that my husband almost at the epicenter when it happened. And that is a street we passed by countless times.

It seems bizarre stories are aplenty in this city. Just two months ago a knife fell from a building opposite Times Square. Thankfully no one was hurt by the plummeting weapon. And what about the needle attack on a young woman,who had felt a sharp pain in her butt, only to realise that a man had walked away with a surgical syringe of red liquid. Random acts by lunatics perhaps? Repercussions of life in a fast pace and stressful city? Somehow, the people here seem to have a high threshold for the weirdest of incidents, accepting these passing events with a kind of nonchalance that I could only hope to muster in due time.

The carrots, a handsome HKD300,000 reward, that Chief Executive Donald Tsang has been dangling since May to anyone who can provide information for the arrest doesn’t seem to be of much help though. A coward who gets a kick out of striking fear in the innocent public. Would someone please get hold of the culprit(s), QUICK!

My heart goes out to the casualties in this mindless attack. It could have been me, my family and friends.

Call me a paranoia but I’m not leaving the house without a brolly and cap, at least for the time being.